Acker Bilk - That's My Home

Styles: Clarinet Jazz
Year: 2013
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 45:17
Size: 105,9 MB
Art: Front

(3:20)  1. That's My Home
(3:10)  2. China Boy
(2:57)  3. Nagasaki
(3:24)  4. Maryland March
(2:43)  5. Creole Jazz
(3:18)  6. Jazz Me Blues
(3:34)  7. Savoy Blues
(1:53)  8. New Orleans Stomp
(3:37)  9. Buona Sera
(3:10) 10. South
(2:21) 11. Lazy River
(4:12) 12. Milenberg Joys
(2:44) 13. Original Dixieland One-Step
(4:48) 14. Black Label Blues

Acker Bilk  or Mr. Acker Bilk, as he was billed has won immortality on rock oldies radio for his surprise 1962 hit "Stranger on the Shore," an evocative ballad featuring his heavily quavering low-register clarinet over a bank of strings. To the jazz world, though, he has a longer-running track record as one of the biggest stars of Britain's trad jazz boom, playing in a distinctive early New Orleans manner. After learning his instrument in the British Army, Bilk joined Ken Colyer's trad band in 1954 before stepping out on his own in 1956. By 1960, a record of his, "Summer Set"  a pun on the name of his home county  landed on the British pop charts, and Bilk was on his way, clad in the Edwardian clothing and bowler hats that his publicist told his Paramount Jazz Band to wear. Several other British hits followed, but none bigger than "Stranger," which Bilk wrote for his daughter Jenny. The single stayed 55 weeks on the British charts and crossed the sea to America, where it hit number one in an era when radio was open to oddball records of all idioms (Bilk gratefully called "Stranger" "my old-age pension"). Released on English Columbia in Britain, several Bilk albums came out in America on the Atco label, and he continued to have hits until the British rock invasion of 1964 made trad seem quaint. With that, Bilk moved into cabaret and continued to have some success in Europe, leading jazz bands, recording with lush string ensembles, and even scoring another hit, "Aria" (number five in Britain), in 1976. Continuing to perform through the 2000s, Bilk slackened his pace so that he could pursue, like Miles Davis, a hobby of painting. ~ Richard S.Ginell https://www.allmusic.com/artist/acker-bilk-mn0000926115/biography

That's My Home

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Erik Truffaz - Lune rouge

Styles: Trumpet Jazz
Year: 2019
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 59:07
Size: 136,8 MB
Art: Front

( 0:45)  1. Tanit
( 6:33)  2. Cycle by Cycle
( 3:44)  3. Reflections
( 4:37)  4. Five On The Floor
( 9:46)  5. ET Two
( 4:05)  6. Tiger in The Train
(11:34)  7. Lune rouge
( 2:00)  8. Algol
( 3:01)  9. She's The Moon
( 1:43) 10. Alhena
( 5:53) 11. Nostalgia
( 5:19) 12. Houlgate

It is three years since Erik Truffaz last released an album. Now, with Lune Rouge, the acclaimed French trumpeter returns in his distinctive style, alongside Arthur Hnatek (drums and electronics), Marcello Giuliani (bass) and Benoit Corboz (Rhodes, keyboards and piano). It is an album of vast open landscapes. The rhythm section lay down insistent, cycling grooves – loping hip hop, four to the floor dance, straight rock, nu jazz electronic loops. A high-performance vehicle of interlocking rhythms, driving to the horizon under the big sky of Truffaz’ simple, beautiful melodic lines. “Do they do solos with so few notes in New York?” Truffaz jokes with Hnatek during the recording, apparently. And what notes they are. Each carefully chosen and delivered with a meltingly smooth tone. Sustained breathy exhalations - haunting, uplifting - surrounded by a luxury of space. Fragments of astral patterns repeated and developed. Simple harmonies. So little used to create so much.

The compositions for the album developed collectively in the Swiss studio from extended improvised sessions, before being adjusted, refined, polished. Hnatek, who joined the long-established band for their last album, is colourful and absorbing on drums  making angular sure-footed changes of direction to keep it fresh. Locking in tightly with Giuliani on bass, they are the compelling precision machine needed. Corboz is key to keeping the listener engaged throughout the album, providing essential variety in texture with his changing use of keyboard sounds. Smoothly supporting Truffaz with sweetly beseeching piano in Nostalgia or the album’s soporific savasana Houlgate. Creating tension with more unsettling, edgy synth sounds in the terrific Five on the Floor, the space-age Tiger in the Train, or the industrial distopian Alhena.

There are also two vocal tunes  the soulful Reflections featuring Jose Jones, and the wistful-optimistic She’s the Moon featuring Andrina Bollinger. They are uncomplicated, pretty songs, providing unexpected conventional islands in the open ocean of the album. It would be interesting to hear the contribution of the vocalists to some of the more spaced out, extended form tracks. Overall, this is a great album which is at its best when Truffaz makes that visceral connection between his music and the listener. The restless racing heartbeat of Cycle by Cycle. The anguish and release of the title track Lune Rouge, opening with an exquisite understated lament from Truffaz over a cycling, echoing electronic pattern, before rising to animalistic cries from the trumpet which loop and overlap. Through his 20 year career, we are told, Truffaz is setting out perpetually “on a passionate quest to make the stars align.” With Lune Rouge there are moments of that stellar calibration he is searching for. Truffaz is promoting the album through a European tour – including a date at the Jazz Café in London on 8th February 2020. https://www.jazzviews.net/erik-truffaz---lune-rouge.html

Personnel: Erik Truffaz (trumpet); Arthur Hnatek (drums, electronics); Marcello Giuliani (bass); Benoit Corboz (Rhodes, keyboards, piano)

Lune rouge

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